Broa

Broa carries an old Iberian idea into the New World. In Portugal the dense, cracked country loaf was long made from rye or barley; when Portuguese settlers pushed inland in Brazil and found maize abundant — the grain that indigenous peoples had cultivated for centuries — they recast the bread around cornmeal. In the colonial kitchens of Minas Gerais, where corn was a staple, the broa de fubá took hold alongside angu and bolo de fubá, often perfumed with fennel seed (erva-doce) or cinnamon and baked in wood ovens to eat with cheese and fresh coffee. The same corn-bread tradition runs through the South and parts of the Northeast.

The crust is firm and crackled, the crumb dense, close and a little crumbly, with the warm grit of cornmeal underfoot and a clear flavour of toasted corn. The fennel seed runs through it with a soft anise sweetness that lifts the earthiness of the maize. It is not airy bread; a thick slice is substantial, best spread with butter or requeijão so the fat softens the crumb against a mug of strong coffee.

Cornmeal has no gluten, so the dough leans on a portion of wheat flour for structure while the fubá sets the dense, tender, slightly crumbly crumb. Scalding the cornmeal with hot liquid before mixing pre-gelatinises its starch, hydrating the grain so the loaf is moist rather than dry and sandy. Yeast gives a modest rise — far less open than a wheat loaf — and the surface dries and splits into the characteristic cracked top as the firm dough expands in the oven heat.